We’ve long known of the Muslim world’s fetish for conspiracy theories, but this one is a real gem. On an Egyptian television show last November, Jamal al-Din Ibrahim (1) claimed that the Islamic State was a creation of John McCain and that its leader, the “Caliph” Abu-Bakar al-Baghdadi, was trained by Mossad. And, if that wasn’t enough, he involved British Intelligence (an old bugbear among Middle Eastern conspiracy fans) and American traitor Edward Snowden.

Professor or not, Mr. al-Din is an expert in nuttiness:

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: ISIS has two meaning – an over meaning and the true meaning. On the face of it, ISIS means “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: Exactly. He said that this was a means to drag the Arab world into a quagmire, and at the same time, to get rid of all the terrorists in a clever way, in keeping with the ways of British intelligence.

…and…

This is a picture of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, right? That’s his picture with John McCain, right?

Interviewer: Exactly. Oh my!

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: And that’s his picture with various Arab organizations… Isn’t that his assistant, Muhammad Noor?

Interviewer: Yes, on the right.

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: Show us the previous picture again. There’s something fishy there. That’s his meeting with John McCain.

Interviewer: Yes, from about two years ago.

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: The guy with the camera is [Baghdadi’s] assistant, Muhammad Noor.

Interviewer: Right.

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: This proves that John McCain was establishing ISIS two years ago, when the Syrian revolution started. That’s him over there. ISIS leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi…

There are many annoying things about Senator McCain, but, somehow, I don’t think establishing a head-chopping Islamic revival movement is among them.

Sadly, this kind of thinking is all too common in the Muslim world, which wallows in a blame-others victim-hood.

Footnote:
(1) Who claims to be a former University of California. If so, it was probably at Irvine, where the anti-Israel and antisemitic craziness is strong.

In an article at The Weekly Standard regarding Russian media reportingderangement over the conflict with Ukraine, Cathy Young writes:

The derangement extends beyond current events. EJ.ru’s media watch columnist Igor Yakovenko notes that TV commentary on the World War I anniversary was so heavy on rhetoric blaming the war on American machinations that the uninformed viewer could easily assume that the United States was Russia’s main adversary in that conflict. TV-1 also aired a “documentary” exploring the “alternative” theory that Archduke Ferdinand was actually killed by a British sniper acting at the behest of an international conspiracy of Freemasons bent on world domination, which later also engineered the Russian Revolution to prevent Russia from emerging as one of the war’s victors.

All you need is fine art and the Papacy and you have the makings of a Dan Brown novel. Something tells me we’re going to have a hard time convincing the Russian public that it’s in their best interests to pull out of Ukraine.

Writing in Human Events, Ann Coulter (1) has noticed something interesting: Of all the various jobs Herman Cain has held, he’s only been accused of being a sexual predator at one, the National Restaurant Association. He’s also never lived in Chicago, but that’s where all the allegations stem from. And the head of the Illinois Restaurant Association, who’ suspected of being the source of the leak of Cain’s files, is the former chief of staff to former Mayor Daley, an Obama ally. As Allahpundit would say, Hmmm….

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago. But you know who has? David Axelrod! And guess who lived in Axelrod’s very building? Right again: Cain’s latest accuser, Sharon Bialek.

Bialek’s accusations were certainly specific. But they also demonstrated why anonymous accusations are worthless.

Within 24 hours of Bialek’s press conference, friends and acquaintances of hers stepped forward to say that she’s a “gold-digger,” that she was constantly in financial trouble — having filed for personal bankruptcy twice — and, of course, that she had lived in Axelrod’s apartment building at 505 North Lake Shore Drive, where, she admits, she knew the man The New York Times calls Obama’s “hired muscle.”

Throw in some federal tax evasion, and she’s Obama’s next Cabinet pick.

The reason all this is relevant is that both Axelrod and Daley have a history of smearing political opponents by digging up claims of sexual misconduct against them.

Coulter then goes on to recount history from Obama’s 2004 US Senate race that bears an eerie similarity to what’s happened to Mr. Cain: the revelations of salacious details and scandal in the divorce records of Obama’s opponents in the Democratic primary and the general election — leaked to the press in spite of the records being sealed. David Axelrod was a key player in the Obama campaign then, too.

Both men’s campaigns were destroyed, and now that he’s risen in the polls to become a serious candidate to face Obama, accusations of sexual misbehavior arise to threaten Herman Cain.

What a coincidence.

I’m not saying there’s nothing to Bialek’s accusations and that this is all an “Axelrodian plot,” nor am I minimizing the problem of sexual harassment; people in positions of power (male and female) all too often fall to the temptation to take advantage of the vulnerable.

But, let’s face it: politics is a dirty game and Team HopenChange has a past history of getting as dirty as needed to win. And not only in Illinois; I’m convinced Axelrod and company were at least backing the efforts of Palin foes in Alaska who filed ethics complaint after ethics complaint in order to paralyze her administration — back then, they saw her as a huge threat for 2012. (But that’s another story for another day.)

Now it’s Herman Cain who, if nominated, may well draw heavily from the Black vote the Democrats must have to win. And suddenly old accusations, buried for years, get new life, and the common thread seems to be Chicago.

Like I said: Hmmm…

Footnote:
(1) For the record, I’m not a Cain-supporter (nor a foe), nor do I have an opinion about whether the charges are true. Nor am I a fan of Coulter or Human Events. But considering the possibility that this is a particularly nasty political dirty trick, given the many coincidences and connections, is not at all unreasonable. It may even be prudent, since we sure to see more like this in the general election.

“In Europe, there have been dozens of brutal wars. Napoleon and Hitler invaded most of the continent, and two world wars burned up most of the countries. Nevertheless, no one attacked Switzerland, which for 500 years has remained an oasis of peace in the heart of a burning hell.

“These days, the world is uniting under economic, political, and military alliances. Nevertheless, Switzerland refuses to join any international alliance or organization, including the EU and the UN [sic].”

“This isolation and absolute neutrality immediately bring to mind The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which discuss a ‘safe haven’ where the [Jews’] wealth [can] be guarded against the wars they themselves spark. They will work to concentrate the world’s wealth [in this ‘safe haven’] so that it becomes their delicious slice [of the world’s wealth], for when they touch off the world revolution [that they are planning].

“In his book Pawns in the Game, William Guy Carr discusses the Jews’ role in the rise of Napoleon and Hitler and their efforts to prevent an attack on Switzerland. In his book Secret World Government, Cherep[-Spiridovich] explains how world Jewry removed Switzerland from its plans to wreak anarchy and wars, so as to protect their money there. Thus, Switzerland gained a reputation as a safe haven in which to hoard the wealth of the goyim…

Fahd, old buddy, you get bonus points for working in a mention of The Protocols, but, somehow, I don’t think “reality” means what you think it means.

Read the whole thing. This is what passes for the intellectual mainstream in the Muslim world. So, naturally, it’s the fault of Israel and the Jews that they can’t make peace with such tolerant neighbors.

PALATE-CLEANSER: If you want to wash the bad taste out of your mouth, have a look at what Egyptian journalist Sharif ‘Abd Al-Ghani wrote in an article in a Qatari newspaper, castigating his co-religionists for their Jew-hatred. An excerpt:

“Sheikh Al-Bari’s stories would cause me and everyone else behind him to curse ‘the Jews – descendants of apes and pigs’ – from the depth of our souls. But there was one thought that occupied my mind, and one question that I could not let go and that no one could answer: Why does our sheikh – and we behind him – shower all these curses on the Jews, but then add the expression ‘peace be upon him’ when speaking of their prophet Moussa [Moses]? Are the Jews not people of the Book and among those whom the Koran orders us to treat kindly so long as they do not fight us? And how could Allah have created them so impure and damned if they are the disciples of a prophet?”

It’s not perfect by any means, as you’ll see when you read the whole thing, and I’m not as sanguine as Walter Russell Mead that this may represent the beginnings of real change in the Islamic world, but one has to admit that it’s a vast improvement over the irrational Jew-hatred that infests and cripples it.

The big news this morning is that President Obama has released his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate, perhaps (we hope) finally settling the (ridiculous) question of whether he was really born in the US and is thus a “natural born citizen,” qualified to be president. From CNN:

President Obama released his original birth certificate Wednesday, saying the controversy surrounding the issue had become a “sideshow.”

(…)

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do,” said Obama.

The surprise release follows recent and sustained remarks by businessman Donald Trump, among others, that raised doubts as to whether the president was born in the United States.

“Over the last two and half years, I have watched with amusement. I have been puzzled with the degree with which this thing just kept going,” Obama told reporters Wednesday.

I’m not sure which is more cynical or self-serving: that last statement of Obama’s or Donald Trump’s crow of victory and vindication:

Donald Trump, who helped drive questions over President Obama’s birth certificate, said the release Wednesday was a victory for him because he made the president act.

“I am really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully, getting rid of this issue,” he said, though he said more investigation has to be done. “Now we have to look at it, see is it real, is it proper.”

Oh, please. Let’s get one thing straight: the only reason Obama finally released the birth certificate was that Trump was gaining traction with his grandstanding charges and private investigators, and so withholding it no longer served Obama’s purpose.

Yes, you read that right. When a desperate Hillary Clinton campaign first made the allegations of foreign birth during the Democratic primaries, the Obama campaign realized they had a gold mine on their hands. By refusing to release it, they knew it was like waving a red flag in front of conspiracy-theorist bulls — they wouldn’t be able to resist. Obama, Axelrod, Emanuel, Plouffe, and the rest knew they could use the Right-wing equivalent of 9/11 Truthers to tar legitimate opponents with the brush of lunacy, and they did just that. As William Jacobson wrote back in 2009:

Who are the primary beneficiaries of the conspiracy theory? Not the people pushing it; they remain on the fringe. Not the Republican party.

No, the primary beneficiary of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory is Obama. He is running the country into the ground at break-neck speed, but the conspiracy theory has handed Democratic operatives like Media Matters, Think Progress, and all the left-wing blogs which jump when the whistle blows, a great way of distracting the public from the damage being done.

(…)

So stop looking for the birth certificate, and start reading the health-care-reduction bill, the cap-and-tax fiasco bill, the unemployment numbers, the national debt and deficit analyses, and the latest Obama speech apologizing for who we are. And contact your Congressman and Senator and demand they read legislation, and give the public opportunity for comment, before they vote on it.

Well, two years later we now have the long-form certificate. Happy? Can we now get back to the serious matters of policy Professor Jacobson listed? Can we deal with real analysis of what shaped Obama’s character and political beliefs? Can we deal with the issues facing the nation with the seriousness they deserve(1)?

Barack Obama is on a fast-track to going down as one of the worst presidents of the last hundred years, and maybe even since the immortal trio of Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan. The birth-certificate controversy has been a sucker’s trap for the Right and the gift that keeps on giving for Obama. Now that he’s released the certificate, can we let it go and concentrate on the real work of getting rid of the man who wants to fundamentally transform America… into Greece?

Let’s hope so.

LINKS: My blog-buddy ST beat me to the punch. Curse that Eastern Time Zone! Ed Morrissey goes off on The Donald. If we’re lucky, Trump’s candidacy will now fade. Memeorandum has tons of links.

TANGENTS:

(1) Some will never give up, sure that the released long form is a fake — a fake I say!! After all…

This was the sight I saw on a bridge over the San Diego Freeway on my way home from the market:

Some very stupid, pathetic people

…and…

Proof that a brain is not required to live

There were about a dozen or so of these paranoid morons on the bridge, holding up their signs and offering free DVDs of THE TRUTH!!1!1 to anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. I’m surprised no one stopped to punch their lights out.

Here’s a message for the 9/11 Truther crowd, and I hope at least some of the mental giants on the bridge right now see this:

You people make me sick.

Your paranoid fantasies are a grotesque insult to the thousands who died that day, the President and all the members of the government who spent the next 7 years making sure that nightmare never happened again, and our entire nation. You are an embarrassment to us all. You make me feel unclean for even coming within 50 feet of you.

You people are sick.

Really. You need help, because you have obvious problems dealing with reality. It’s not uncommon with people who are frightened by a complex world; there’s so much comfort to be found in reducing everything that’s too much for your fragile minds, such as the idea that fire can melt steel, to simple conspiracies. It makes you feel powerful again, doesn’t it, because you know the truth? Well let me tell you the truth:

You are mentally ill, you nauseating wretches.

And this guy is probably your leader:

Now go away and go back to eating paint chips.

PS: Since this also goes out to my Twitter feed, if anyone reading this is sympathetic toward 9/11 Trutherism and follows me on Twitter, please unfollow me. Now. I don’t want to be dirtied by even the merest association with you.